Creating connected communities starts with the human scale

Connected is a speakers series presented by Dream Development to explore better home and community building. Trevor Dickie, vice-president of planning and development for Dream, says a few words. Katelyn Anne Photography / Calgary Herald

A weighty panel of experts agree that developers must build communities on a more human scale.

The panel members, hosted by Todd Talbot of HGTV’s Love It or List It Vancouver, shared their views on what it means to live a connected life during Dream Development’s Speaker Series held Wednesday at Telus Spark.

“Connections shape our everyday lives, whether with people, nature, the community or the promise of the future,” said Trevor Dickie, vice-president of Calgary Land, Dream Calgary. “The Connected speaker series provides innovative thinking and discussion.”

The event was part of Dream’s launch in Calgary under its new banner. Formerly Dundee Developments, Dream builds innovative new communities throughout Western Canada. Dickie said Dream is changing social DNA by providing more public spaces and people-oriented streetscapes in mixed-use communities.

Hamilton has done the interiors for several new show homes in Vista Crossing, a new Dream community in Crossfield. She agrees that people want to go back to how things used to be.

“We have to bring in all these things that people love about the inner-city to truly make it a community. Otherwise, it’s just rows of houses,” she observed.

Scanga, a partner in Calthorpe Associates in the U.S., was a pioneer in bringing urban design back to a more human scale.

“We had a hemorrhage after the Second World War,” he said. “Developers would build huge parking lots and then worry about the buildings later. Everything was about the car. Going for ice cream, to the movies, to the store or to visit people. Why was the car the only link between these things? We had to change that. We had to see what made these older neighbourhoods great and bring them back.”

More public spaces, transit-oriented development and mixed-use communities are important elements. Scanga noted that balancing those uses is also important.

“Mixing not only economies but different ages. Old, new, young,” he added.

Hirsch, who appears regularly on CBC Newsworld, stole the show when he outlined how future technology, from driverless cars to smart homes and mobile devices, aligns with connectivity among humans.

“In that failed experiment of a car-centric suburbia, we lost our humanity,” he said.

Communities constructed on a human scale will restore that connection but, ironically, so will technology which allows us to increase transparency and “transcend loneliness.”

On a down note, he also noted that technology may be putting us on the brink of a massive global unemployment crisis. Hirsch wryly commented that “it’s a good thing that we’re getting these human-centric communities so we can connect with our neighbours because we’re sure going to have a lot of leisure time.”

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